Ethan Hawke walks into the Odeon, the Tribeca restaurant that was a mecca for the literary world in the '80s, and says the most earnest, Ethan Hawke–ish thing possible. "I always think of Bright Lights, Big City. Like I'm about to go in the bathroom and do lines with Bret Easton Ellis." At 47, he has a taut and sharply creased face, but his eyes have the same mischievous glint of his youth. Hawke has been acting since 1985, picking up four Oscar nominations along the way, and though his career has had its peaks and valleys, we are unquestionably at a peak right now. In May he gave an uncannily good performance as a morally conflicted reverend in Paul Schrader's First Reformed. This month he stars in the Nick Hornby adaptation Juliet, Naked, as an exhausted rock star whose sole 1990s album has become an object of cult fascination. And next month will see Blaze, the dreamy, impressionistic movie Hawke directed about the obscure country singer Blaze Foley, who, like Hawke, originally hailed from Austin, Texas, and who, unlike Hawke, never found any real success. Hawke says he made the movie in part because he's always been fascinated with—even envious of—people who, willfully or otherwise, choose obscurity. He's never quite been able to do that himself, he says.
So here he is instead: older but undaunted, somehow still getting better at the work. He looks around the Odeon again and leans in, as if to share a confidence. "I think our maître d' over there is my oldest daughter's best friend from high school," he says quietly. "It's a strange moment in a man's life when you come into the Odeon feeling like a hipster and the maître d' is really good friends with your daughter."
GQ: Speaking of family stories, my wife tells one about passing you on the street in Brooklyn. You were holding an orange ice cream cone. Then, a few blocks later, she came upon a shop with a sign: "Reality Bites, so try our mango ice cream." Did that actually happen?
Ethan Hawke: Yes, that did happen. I remember that day so specifically because I took a picture of it. It's a strange thing when you pass things like that, that say "Reality Bites." Or people tell me they bought a Monte Carlo because of Training Day. You know? The way that movies…impact brains. But that is a true story.
Did you go in because of the sign?
No, dude, I was going there anyway. [laughs] It was a total coincidence.
What's it like to see fragments of stuff that you worked on just show up on a street you're walking down?
The past is never the past. I remember when Reality Bites came out, how nervous and apprehensive I was anytime anyone said the expression "Gen X." I was so worried that it was going to be a label that I would be stuck with. And now I look at it with such affection. I have a certain pride about being part of a generational movement.
How close were you in real life to the slacker characters you played in Reality Bites and Before Sunrise?
When I did Dead Poets Society, people thought I was a prep-school kid and I got offered other prep-school parts. And then for years, Jesse from Before Sunrise and Troy from Reality Bites were what people thought of when I would meet them. But then Training Day comes out, and the perception around me takes on a new energy. And then Boyhood comes out, and all of a sudden you're everybody's fucking dad. But I did also go on a date once, and we were getting along pretty well, but the young woman kept accidentally calling me Troy. And I had to say, "My name is Ethan."
Even other actors who have experienced fame probably haven't experienced being the face, or one of the faces, of a whole generation.
What I liked about it was that I was famous with my own generation, but old people didn't give a shit about who I was. I'd had this experience on Dead Poets Society, where there was Robin Williams and Peter Weir. One was a true genius, comic genius, and one was a true master filmmaker. Peter Weir—he was a grown-up. He was in charge of his craft. And that was an incredible teacher to have, and it framed the way that I thought about making movies. But when I went on to do Before Sunrise, with Richard Linklater, I was meeting a guy of my own generation. He was a little older than me, but we had the same references. He was no card-carrying hall-of-famer. He was staying up late at the bar with me. We were trying to find our own voice together. What are we going to contribute? I remember watching Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson at the Academy Awards the year they presented Best Picture. And I remember one of my friends just screaming, "Get off the stage, you old clowns! Your time's over!" I mean, their work is staggering. But that was an energy we had of wanting to contribute, wanting a turn, wanting an at-bat.
When did you feel like the '90s ended for you?
In my brain, it happened with becoming a father. All I was interested in was this little girl, you know? And she was born in '98. I'd had kind of a frustrating experience, because despite doing some work like Gattaca, Reality Bites, Before Sunrise—I'd done this kind of indie punk-rock version of Hamlet—so I was doing work that I liked, but nothing I was doing was making any kind of mark in a commercial environment. And to say I cared would be a vast overstatement, because I really didn't care. But I wondered whether there was going to be a place for me. It's not like, Oh, now I want to start making zombie movies by the dozen. I didn't want to be a commercial success. That wasn't something I aspired to. I wanted to make art that I was proud of and that spoke to me personally. I wanted to be connected to something that I felt was authentic. And I was doing that, but it wasn't working in a commercial way. And that was confusing.
I read that you only got 2001's Training Day after you flew to Los Angeles and basically went around town, asking for work.
Yeah. I had to go audition a couple times. That was when I knew the '90s were over. I was in a unique position, which is that I was only 30 years old, and I was washed up. All my friends were going to audition for Saving Private Ryan. And I couldn't even get an audition for it, because they knew me and didn't want me. It's like, There's no need for me to audition, because we know him. No, not him. And people were reading scenes from A Midnight Clear, which was a movie I had done and apparently Spielberg loved, but he didn't want me to audition. All these other guys were getting out of theater school, like the Ben Afflecks of the world, the Matt Damons of the world. All those guys were finding their voice and coming into their own. And you are on the lunch box from back then and have no place on the new lunch boxes, you know?
It was Denzel Washington's recommendation that ultimately put you over the top for that role. Did he ever tell you why he wanted you?
He and Antoine [Fuqua, director of Training Day] were my champions. He liked that I had theater experience, and I think he knew that if he had a decent assist man, he would win the Oscar. I think he saw it quite mathematically. It was a studio cop picture, but he had a vision of how it could be a French Connection. But the acting had to be at a certain level. And he takes the theater extremely seriously. The theater asks a lot more of the actor. And you have to be a good scene partner. You don't rely on an editor. He was trying to cultivate magic, and magic happens in interaction.
You were nominated for an Oscar for Training Day. Was that the beginning of something or the end of something for you?
In a lot of ways, it could have been the beginning of something. It was the best moment of my career. Like, Maybe, maybe, you could be commercially viable. But I got divorced and my personal life fell apart. I don't know if you feel this way, but when you're depressed, it's really easy to see everything that is fake about other people and life, and I just started seeing all that. How phony celebrity was, how phony everything is. You channel your inner Holden Caulfield, you know?
What ultimately brought you out of that period?
Work. Theater. My kids. That's the wonderful thing about children is they just need you every day. It gives your life balance. Meaning your whole life isn't just about yourself.
You filmed Before Sunset around this time. Just watching you in that film is cathartic.
That was the height of my marriage falling apart, and getting to spend that summer with Julie Delpy and Richard Linklater, reconnecting with a part of myself that was more...what's the right word? Idealized. A cleaner self. That was a great summer. And it really helped me put myself back together.
Your eldest daughter was recently cast on Stranger Things, a show that also stars Winona Ryder, your old romantic interest from Reality Bites. The nostalgia loop is mind-boggling.
If you know my daughter, it becomes kind of awesome, because she's not some kind of doe-eyed victim in all this. She's a ferocious young person who's gonna try to carve her own path. And so for me, that's the energy that's motivating everything. But it definitely feels like an acid trip.
In Juliet, Naked, you play a musician who is still living down the sole cult-classic album he made as a young man in the '90s. I wonder if you identified at all.
I definitely relate to it. I kind of saw that character as "Troy Dyer looks at 50." You can imagine if Troy went on to be successful in music, this would have happened to him. He would have said fuck you to it and then maybe wondered if he regretted it or not.
That character, like you, probably spends more time than he'd like talking about stuff he did in the past.
How many people have to walk around New York City and still talk to strangers about what they did when they were 17? I mean, people come up to me to say "carpe diem" all the time. They want to talk to me about Robin Williams. And if I have a shred of love in my heart, I just have to do it, because it means a lot to them.
I worked with Kris Kristofferson once, and we were sitting at a table and some waiter looked at him and said, "Hey, I gotta tell you, man, I just—do you mind? Can I have two seconds of your time?" And Kris is like, "Yeah." "'Me and Bobby McGee.' What a great song." And he looked at him and he said, "Aw, thanks!" And how does he not throw the table at this guy? I mean, how many millions of times has he heard that? But you know what? It does mean something to that guy.
One time I brought my father backstage at a Willie Nelson concert, and my father felt the need to tell Willie that Red Headed Stranger was a really great album. And Willie took the compliment really seriously, and it really meant a lot to my dad. But I can't imagine it wasn't hard to do.
You've played a lot of guys who have been reluctant to sell out—that concept seems more and more quaint now, doesn't it?
Yeah. It doesn't exist anymore. Do you remember when Jim Morrison went apoplectic when, without his permission, the record company used a Doors song for an ad? Apo-fucking-plectic! And now Dylan's doing ads. Big business has so completely eaten everything that the idea of resisting makes people laugh. It's really strange. And that's happened in my generation. I can't help but admire the people who haven't sold out. Some part of my heart would wilt if Sean Penn was doing a Rolex ad or Denzel was doing a Beefeater ad or something like that. I love that when I see Denzel in a movie, I don't think of a product. I don't mind somebody saying, "Oh, that's the guy from Before Sunrise." But I don't want them to say, "That's the guy from the Odeon ad."But that is a pretty retro point of view.
You're one of the few who have still held on to the idea.
I do ultimately subscribe to Cassavetes' thing, which is that it's totally okay to sell out, as long as you know why you're selling out. Like, he would go do some dipshit TV show and then go make A Woman Under the Influence with the money. A lot of young people make the mistake in that they sell out before they even know what it is they're selling for. Make sure you get your heart clean, and then you actually can do whatever the hell you want. The problem is when you just start selling out for nothing.
Watching Blaze, I was struck by the difference between the pop stuff you star in and the things you direct and write, which can be defiantly noncommercial.
My best movies are not the ones that paid me: the Before trilogy, Boyhood, First Reformed, Dead Poets Society. But I'm 47 years old. I pay my alimony with my acting. I pay my kids' health insurance with my acting. I pay everybody's tuition with my acting. I'm helping various charities with my acting. I've become a professional, and I never wanted to be a professional. I kind of hate professionals. And so when I get left alone in a room for a second and I get to be creative again, I'm like, Okay, Ethan, you get to make a movie.
I do want to ask a question about ambition, though: You've been nominated for an Academy Award four times and never won. I think you could at least be nominated for your performance in First Reformed this year. Are you trying to win?
I was on the subway the other day, and I was thinking, What would I say if somebody asked me that question? Because everyone in the world knows that when an actor says that they don't want to win an award, they're lying. I interviewed Patti Smith and I asked her about that and she said, "I want to win every award!" I loved that answer. But I've always been wary of being famous for something I don't feel good about. You know, we never leave our childhood behind. River Phoenix was my first scene partner. I watched him become successful and people come up to him and go, God! He had huge fans for A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, right? And it filled him with insecurity, because he didn't think the movie was any good. And he was so proud of My Own Private Idaho. And then because he started making a name for himself—he was cast as Young Indiana Jones, and that made him really insecure. And I saw the strange relationship to celebrity and self-confidence. And that if it's off, there's a real misshapenness in your self-esteem. Patti Smith feels good about her prizes because she earned them all doing her own work her own way. Linklater's not conflicted about winning a prize for Boyhood. That's his life's work. Fuckin' A!
Do you think you could've given the performance you give in First Reformed ten years ago?
No. You ever hear the expression "That actor has gravitas"? When I was younger, that always sounded cool to me. George C. Scott had gravitas. Gene Hackman had gravitas. What I didn't know is that to have it, you had to have gone through a lot of pain. [laughs] You've had enough success to know success isn't gonna make you happy, and you've had enough failure to know that that's even worse, and you know all the things that you're not going to be. And simultaneously, I'm becoming an adult, right? I mean, this should have happened a long time ago, but it's happened—I have four kids, I get asked to join boards, I get asked to teach. The universe is changing what it wants from me.
Is there a trick to longevity in your profession?
Can I tell you something funny? Paul Schrader and I were driving around doing Q and A's, so I said to Schrader, I said, "Hey, why is it that so many of your generation, the greats—Scorsese, Pacino, Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Nicholson, De Niro—why are so many of them not doing the same kind of work that they did back in the '70s? Is it that the culture doesn't want any more? Did they get bored of it?"And his answer was really surprising to me. He said, "The middle-class lifestyle isn't enough."
And ultimately a middle-class lifestyle was always enough for me. Like, I needed to pay my doctors' bills and I needed to get my kids to school—but I don't need three pairs of shoes. One pair of shoes is fine. And I don't need more bedrooms. I don't need bedrooms for fantasy houseguests, you know, that don't arrive.
There's what I think is an Al Pacino line about how celebrities are perpetually frozen at whatever age they were when they became famous. Do you struggle to reconcile the 47-year-old you with the 19-year-old you?
Success becomes a kind of formaldehyde for some people. And they get stuck in it and die there. Paul Schrader could have just sat there and died at American Gigolo. And instead he's doing a Kickstarter campaign with Lindsay Lohan? That's why I love him! Patti Smith is a great example. How do you continually bloom? She could have been stuck, but instead she's still living. I think about the way that my daughter looks at acting: She looks at it like it's this noble profession. Like, Imagine if I could be an actor. And you start thinking like that and trying to make decisions to live up to her ethos or the ethos I gave her—and now she's old enough to see the lies in my own behavior. So I'm trying to get rid of those lies. And I like that. It helps me not atrophy. It helps me get out of formaldehyde.
Zach Baron is GQ's staff writer.
A version of this story originally appeared in the August 2018 issue with the title "Ethan Hawke Is Always in Style."